CHEKOV: CHEcKpoint Inhibitor effects On SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination

癌症患者的免疫系统不仅受到自身疾病的影响，也受到治疗副作用的影响。一类新的抗癌药物，免疫检查点抑制剂（ICIs），与所有其他治疗方法非常不同，因为它们通过直接改变免疫系统来靶向癌症。这些药物现在被常规用于治疗各种癌症患者。它们还会引起副作用，这些副作用可能会因感染SARS-CoV2或接种疫苗而增强。关于ICIs如何影响针对SARS-CoV-2的疫苗接种，我们知之甚少。鉴于COVID-19可能在可预见的未来传播，了解目前的COVID-19疫苗对接受ici的患者是否有效非常重要。为了解决这个问题，我们一直在收集大流行期间感染的接受ICIs治疗的黑色素瘤患者的血液样本。最近，我们在COVID-19疫苗接种运动期间从ci治疗的黑色素瘤患者和健康个体中收集了样本。我们现在希望对这些样本进行测试，以了解接种ici治疗的患者是否会产生与健康人相同的免疫反应强度和质量，或者是否需要不同的疫苗和/或不同的疫苗接种计划来保护这些患者。我们还将检查是否接种疫苗或感染接受ICIs的患者可能会增加这些药物引起的免疫驱动副作用的风险。

The immune system of cancer patients is affected by their disease but also from side effects of their treatment. A new class of anti-cancer drugs, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), are very different to all other treatments because they work by directly altering the immune system to target the cancer. These drugs are now used routinely to treat patients with various cancers. They can also cause side effects that could be enhanced by SARS-CoV2 infection or vaccination. There is very little known about how ICIs impact vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. Given that COVID-19 is likely to circulate for the foreseeable future, it is important to know if current COVID-19 vaccines are effective in patients receiving ICIs. To address this question, we have been collecting blood samples from melanoma patients being treated with ICIs that were infected during the pandemic. More recently we collected samples from ICI-treated melanoma patients and healthy individuals during the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. We now wish to test these samples to see if vaccination of ICI-treated patients illicits the same magnitude and quality of immune response as observed in healthy individuals, or if different vaccines and/or different vaccine scheduling may be required to protect these patients. We will also examine if vaccination or infection of patients receiving ICIs could increase the risk of developing the immune-driven side effects that can be caused by these drugs.